This article contains a short guide on how to edit your personal statement and create tension and suspense in your writing. For most potential students, there are some clear reasons why they want to start college. Writing the personal statement for college presentations is one of the most difficult and overwhelming tasks for any potential student. This article will offer information on how to build tension and suspense and how to edit your personal statement, which is an area that students tend to overlook.
It is often said that personal statements are usually autobiographical. This may well be true, for a wise maxim is “write about what you know.” And if there’s one thing we all know more about than anything else, it’s our own lives. Often students only write about their reasons for wanting to embark on a particular college course, and many personal statements lack emotion, suspense, and tension. However, in fact, emotion is a key ingredient in successful personal statements. And while student lives may differ considerably from each other, each of us will have experienced the full range of emotions. When writing your personal statement, it’s important to convey a sense of place to your reader, and the way to do this is with all five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. It is all too easy to forget that the scenes, which are indelibly etched in his own mind, will not be equally clear in the reader’s unless he makes them so through his writing.
Tension is one of the second most important elements in writing, closely related to suspense, the “what happens next” ingredient. The problem for many students is trying to condense the personal statement into 600 words. Obviously, the admission officer knows that he only has this limited space, but however he judges him by the four minutes he takes to read his personal statement, if his personal statement includes tension and suspense, he is sure to be a winner. The secret to a good personal statement is not to give away too quickly, keep us guessing, hang on to every word, thus building up the tension and suspense. For there to be tension in your personal statement, there must be (or will be) something important at stake. Maybe this was your family life or what you think is your future. Perhaps the reason why you think about the course you want to study. Whatever it is, if you don’t reveal the result too early, you’ll keep the reader’s interest for much longer. The following personal statement begins with a powerful introduction that fills the suspense:
“The prospect of helping people has led me to achieve many goals in life and this is truly my dream. Although it is great to have ambitions, now I want to turn my goals into reality. Being a nurse is a natural extension of my interest in medicine. After graduation, I found myself advising investment bankers in the stock market, secretly wishing for the opportunity to help others overcome disease and promote health.”
In this personal statement introduction, the reader is captured as to why he chose to become an investment banker. The author of this piece has shown a powerful introduction, the style is simple and direct narrative. This personal statement is sure to provide valuable insight into why he wants to become a nurse.
In order for there to be tension in your personal statement, it will help to describe a highly charged incident, part of a particularly difficult period in your life. Whatever it is, you will keep your readers interested for much longer. The following example shows a perfect buildup of tension and suspense:
“When the letter arrived by airmail with an American stamp, I knew immediately that it was from my university with the results of my race, and I opened it with as much excitement as if it were a birthday present. With trembling fingers, I took out the pages of thin blue paper, and my heart began to pound as I began to read.”
Remember that tension, like all techniques, is just another tool to make your writing more vivid and interesting to read. However, if you use it, you must make it clear to your readers that the events you are describing have some bearing on your topic of study. Otherwise, they’ll get confused, have to read again to understand it, and may end up feeling irritated enough to stop reading.
Words and phrases often used to build tension include: intimidated; the heart was pounding; ferocity. Thus, the tension and suspense build so that, metaphorically, we hold our breath compelled to keep reading to find out “what happens next.”
How to Edit Your Personal Statement to Send to College
When you’ve finished the actual writing, what do you do? Well, for starters, don’t be too quick to submit your personal statement before checking it out. Few if any experienced writers ever need to review their work. Some do it as they go along, but most will get their first draft Personal Statement on paper without worrying too much about how it’s written, and then, when it’s finished, go through it, pruning, polishing, and fine-tuning the overall content. Therefore, this section is about how to edit the personal statement. It is recommended to review the following:
o That you have not exceeded in adjectives and adverbs. If you find you have, use some of the former and, where possible, change the latter to stronger verbs.
o Threatens that he has not used clichés or hackneyed phrases but has always found fresh images to describe himself in the best possible way.
oMake sure you haven’t consistently used the same word in the same paragraph. This can be very irritating to the admissions officer and you just need to think a bit more to rephrase it or very often it can be omitted without affecting the meaning. A thesaurus is useful for finding alternative words.
oMake sure your spelling and grammar are impeccable. If in doubt, consult a dictionary and/or grammar book or ask someone whose knowledge of English you trust to read this for you. Alternatively, send your personal statement to the editors at Get Into Uni Oxbridge http://www.getintouni.com who will edit this for you, seamlessly.
oMake sure you haven’t used long, unwieldy sentences or paragraphs. If you have, you should divide them.
o That you have started your personal statement with a powerful introduction so that it grabs the reader’s attention immediately.
oThat its structure is easy to follow and that each sentence is hooked into the next line.
oThat you finish with your future professional goals.
A key advantage is using a professional to edit and enhance your personal statement. However, if you’re working in isolation and don’t have that advantage, be careful about allowing family or friends to read and comment. On the one hand, an exterior will be objective and critical: they can be full of praise or go to the other extreme when it comes to style, at least.
However, long before you’ve reached the point of review, it’s important that your personal statement be a selling tool so you can get into your chosen college. If you want to interest the reader, it is important that you be your own critic. You’ll need to prune and polish, check grammar and spelling, re-look at your style – in fact, you may need to rewrite your first few sentences to ensure your personal statement is powerful and instantly grabs your readers’ attention. . A great way to help with this is to read personal statement examples, these examples will give you a clear idea of how you can improve your opening.
Get Into Uni offers students editing personal statements and tips on how you can get a leg up on the competition when applying to college. The website includes sample personal statements, a free writing guide, and lots of information to help you write your personal statement.
Final note:
Your personal statement is crucial to your application. Therefore, planning your personal statement is your first step towards success. Get a competitive advantage and request the best editing service on the web.
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